


he shall sing of his once and future king

by Scourge of Nemo (Disguise_of_Carnivorism)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Accidental Subspace, Armor Cleaning, Canon-Typical Violence, Caretaking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Intimacy, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 04:02:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30015843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disguise_of_Carnivorism/pseuds/Scourge%20of%20Nemo
Summary: Assassins crash Din's coronation, leaving the new Mand'alor shaken, with an injured arm and blood-soaked ceremonial armor.Boba Fett offers to help him clean up. He doesn't think it through, really, until he's already standing between Din's legs at the edge of the Mandalorian throne.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Boba Fett
Comments: 50
Kudos: 268





	he shall sing of his once and future king

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the fantastic peps (PepperPrints) for the beta read.
> 
> This fic was inspired by me seeing [this concept art](https://pixalry.io/post/190043678059/mandalorian-concept-art-created-by-mack-sztaba) and going, "wow, what a pain in the butt that would be to clean."

The coronation went to shit in record time.

Mandalorians didn’t tend to host long, formal, ritualistic events, and Din wondered grimly if this might be _why_ as he braced himself against a spray of blaster fire. The longer the event lasted, the more likely you’d die before it ended. 

But the New Republic had insisted. Show of good faith, political overture, sign of future cooperation. Din hated every word of it, every implication. He’d abdicate in a second, if he could. And yet — warriors kept challenging him for the darksaber, and he kept, despite his best intentions, _winning_. Sometimes in public, inadvertently spectacular manners. 

So here he was, wearing ridiculously engraved armor, back to back with Boba Fett, fending off an assassination attempt amidst the hiss of blasterfire and the screams of panicked New Republic politicians. 

Din leapt to the side to dodge a nasty blade swipe. He almost didn’t jump far enough — the ceremonial beskar was stiff and new and unbroken in, unfamiliar and uncomfortable. 

“Don’t use the darksaber,” Boba muttered darkly under his breath. Din could sense Boba behind him, inches away: the steady surety of his stance, the casual violence of his protection. No need to watch his own back, when Boba was there. “Cortosis weave in everything they’re wearing. Makes it useless.”

Damn, Din wished he had a blaster.

 _Certain advisors_ who have recently proven to give quite terrible advice said that the New Republic might “take blasters as an affront” and counseled him to “minimize the weaponry” because “we’re not barbarians.”

Retrospectively, quite suspicious. Well, good thing he’d still snuck a few knives in under his gauntlets (on Boba’s far superior advice). 

Din launched himself at the nearest assassin, drawing the knife as he did so. He drove the vibroblade in brutally, unrepentantly. The humanoid dropped in a pulse of blood, gasping and grabbing at his neck. The warm liquid splattered across Din’s chest and helmet in a wet spurt.

Ugh.

This was why he preferred _blasters_.

Each assassin was well-armed, well-trained, clearly prepared for a fight. But they were nothing to Din and Boba, even both under-armed. The assassins dropped like so many flies before them. They died in seconds. 

Din stood panting. Blood dripped from his gloves, landing with little _plops_. Red streaked his white cloak. He wiped Boba’s borrowed vibroblade on the cloak — no use trying to keep it from getting dirtier, as it was already ruined. Maybe he’d keep it, wear it around bloody for the effect. 

The New Republic’s honor guard had barely drawn their own weapons. Politicians swooned on the folding chairs packed into the throne room. Boba had thrown one of the assassins into the buffet table, which had toppled under the impact and sent the artfully prepared Republic cuisine scattering across the floor. 

Frivolous. Wasteful. Stupid. Pandering. This entire ceremony — a farce.

His hand clenched around the hilt of the darksaber. 

“Okay, everybody who’s still here, out,” Boba yelled in the distance. The rumble of the remaining crowd faded as Din stared at the bodies, cataloguing each overpriced piece of equipment, and their blood seeped into the grooves of the floor before his throne. 

* * *

Fury gripped Boba. 

He finished kicking out the New Republic bootlickers — with relish — and let the anger through with his barked commands. They’d watched him at first, uncomprehending as he grabbed them by the shoulders and shoved them from the throne room. But then they’d seen the mythosaur on his shoulder, processed the colors of his helmet, and their eyes went wide as they realized exactly who they were looking at.

 _Then_ they got moving.

At least he could feel some grim satisfaction that Boba Fett struck more fear into these Coredwellers than an entire troupe of assassins. 

Boba commed the few he actually trusted in the Mandalorian guard — all vague acquaintances from his days on Concord Dawn, reconnecting in recent days — and asked them to start scouring the city for any more signs of trouble. Then he commed Fennec. She knew exactly how to gut a conspiracy. 

First thing he did next, that cut-rate New Mandalorian advisor was out the door. Alive, only if he was lucky. _Bo-Katan_ , even, would’ve given better advice, but she was off pillaging imperial ships in a fit of petty rage over losing her duel for the darksaber (again). 

But now, Boba needed to deal with his Mand’alor.

Din stood in the dead center of the throne room, looking like — well, Boba didn’t really have a frame of reference. Not for the way the light crested the Sundari throne, reflecting off his unpainted helm and crowning him with the blazing sun. 

They’d timed the coronation so this would happen in front of the New Republic officials, like some ancient portent blessing Din’s rule. 

Now, the sight was just for him. Din’s chest heaved, and blood streaked his beskar, and his hand clenched and unclenched around the hilt of the lightsaber. He looked for all the world like the perfect picture of those mythic Mandalorians of old, the sort of warrior who could fell a mythosaur singlehandedly, harvest its bones and sup from its marrow. 

Boba swallowed. 

“How are you feeling about the first attempt on your life?” he called across the room, walking towards Din.

“Not sure I’d say that’s the first,” Din said, with a note of that quiet humor that Boba so loved.

“Well, certainly the best-funded. Auspicious start to your reign, Mand’alor.” 

Boba was close enough to look Din over now, check for any telltale signs that someone had managed to nick him with a poisoned blade or some other, subtler death in all the chaos. No rips in the flightsuit, which was a good sign. But — 

“Did you know your arm’s messed up?”

Din looked down at his left arm.

“It’s the other one,” Boba said, “so I guess not.” 

Din started to reach for it, but Boba stepped forward to intercept his hand. “I wouldn’t mess with it. Must’ve been that first moment, when you blocked the guy who went for your neck.” 

Din just shook his head. The man stayed quiet at the best of times and seemed to retreat further and further into himself the more that went on around him — never checking out, always so clearly watching and listening to everything around him. But sometimes Boba worried about what went on in his head, all alone for so many years under that helmet.

Boba knew how dark it could get, under there. 

“You need to sit?”

“No.” Din shook his head and tried to step back. “I need to deal with this. So many people _saw_ that, I have to —”

“I’ve already taken care of it. You need to sit.” Boba started herding Din back toward the throne, taking care to step at an angle that still left a clear path visible to the door when Din tensed up. The other Mandalorian never seemed comfortable without a sightline on an exit. Boba had to remind himself that the jetpack was newer to Din — to Boba, the entire throne room was one huge potential exit. Fancy windows be damned. 

“Watch your step,” Boba said, settling his hand lightly on Din’s elbow as he backed up to the throne’s stairs. Din turned to take the rest of the steps alone.

He settled back in the throne, spine tense, bloody leathers gripping his knees. That was something, at least. The sun still shone behind him, though indirectly now — its glow brought Din’s armor to brilliant life. 

Blood was starting to dry in the whorls and grooves of Din’s ceremonial armor. It would be a nightmare to get out. But Din was injured and maybe even a bit shaken — less by the fight for his life, it seemed, and more by the pageantry of it all. And he didn’t have time to change into his usual, with who knows how many other assassins roaming the city. 

“Sundari’s Armorer would kill you if you let this set,” Boba said, pointing at the blood.

“ _My_ Armorer would kill me for wearing something this impractical,” Din groused, and Boba filed the little bit of information away — one more knot in the strange tangle that was Din Djarin. 

Boba pulled a few soft polishing cloths from a pouch on his belt, then eyed the nearby buffet table trimmings — tablecloth, napkins. Perfect for soaking up blood. He recovered a few.

Din reached out as if to take the bundle, though Boba still stood far away, at the base of the throne’s dais. 

“I could do it,” Boba said, before he could think any better of it. “Easier on your arm.” 

“Just use the cloak to wipe it off.” Din gave a heavy, exhausted sigh. His hands slid to the arms of the Sundari throne — the most open his body language had been this entire day. 

It took Boba a moment to realize the response was meant as permission. 

Right then.

He ascended to the throne slowly, step by step. It felt — unsettling. Strange that it felt remarkable at all, really. His grandfather had held this throne, once; it had been his father’s; by rights, many might have said at one point that it should become Boba’s.

But now he approached as a postulant, prepared to bend knee to his king. 

At the top of the dais, Boba paused. “Mand’alore,” he said, bowing mockingly.

Din just groaned. “Do not. Not you.” 

Boba eyed Din’s beskar, identified the problem areas: The elaborate scrollwork on the helm, the deep grooves across the chest plate, the delicate flares of geometry along the pauldrons. All sprayed with blood. He could handle that. No one had ever done this for Boba. But he had cleaned his own armor time enough.

And Boba used to do this for his father, after his more brutal hunts — scrub the blaster burns from his armor, touch up the paint. Jango never needed the help; it was meditative, one more way to bond and spend time together while Jango had spare moments on Kamino. A simple way to show care without speaking it. 

That had been his primary association, when he suggested it: a way to help calm Din after a week of nightmarish New Republic negotiations, after a disrupted political gesture, after a quick and brutal fight. 

But as he stepped between Din’s knees, Boba realized what a horrible miscalculation he had made. He hadn’t thought about how _absolutely not the same_ it would be to do this for someone else. Someone he had fought beside. Someone he wished to serve. 

The throne was so deep, and Din sat so far back, that Boba had to lean over him to reach. The motion brought their helmets close together. Boba strained a bit to keep them from smacking together, hyperconscious of how he could hear Din’s quiet breaths, the ones too soft for the vocoder to pick up. Din’s pulse jumped under his hands as Boba finally detached the cloak from his neck. 

Still tense from the assassination, probably.

Boba tugged the cloak out from behind Din, trying to ignore the way Din’s knees bracketed his thighs. 

Blood. He was here to clean up blood. 

He pulled out the cleaning solution he kept with his polishing cloth and spritzed the cloak. 

Boba kept his head down, his eyes focused on Din’s chest plate. The ceremonial cloak was heavy; it absorbed the most obvious smears of red from that surface easily. He wiped in quick, circular motions, cleaning the surface, until all that was left was the real problem — the already-drying drops that had rushed in to fill the elaborate designs that embellished the armor. 

Good craftsmanship, for all its impracticalities, Boba had to admit. 

“Where do you want me to start with the rest?” Boba asked, cringing at how dry his throat felt, and at how loud his voice rang out in the empty throne-room. 

“What?” Din asked. He had tipped his head back against the throne, visor fixed on the ceiling, as Boba had worked, but now he leveled that expressionless t-visor on Boba.

“Your helmet? Pauldrons? Chest? They’re all filthy, still. I need to get as much blood as I can before I switch to the polishing cloth — trust me.” 

“I do.”

Boba almost flinched away as the words hit him. Fighting to keep his voice level, he said, “Okay, but you didn’t answer my question.”

A long, taut pause. Din’s visor felt like it bore into him, like their gazes met behind their helmets, but Boba knew he could be looking anywhere — tracing paths to the nearest escape, marking every gap and vulnerable point in his armor, cataloguing every sign of weakness in his body. 

“Wherever you think is best,” Din just said. 

That left Boba with a dilemma. Step forward, push Din’s knees further apart, to reach the pauldrons? Or take his head in Boba’s hands, risk accidentally looking him in the eyes? His heart was in his throat, and his blood beat fast, and — Din probably couldn’t _tell_. Boba had worked his whole life to make sure that no one could catch a glimpse of what happened behind the armor. He’d trained his body to never show a tell, tamped down every whimper of pain or pleasure. But Boba was terrified that Din could see past all that, even through their twinned t-visors.

This would feel much less daunting if Boba were just a bit taller. Then he could just fucking _reach_. 

Boba would avoid looking at him for as long as possible, then.

He started with Din’s shoulders, giving them a perfunctory wipe, then dragged the cloak awkwardly over Din’s head. It took just a few minutes and the occasional application of cleaning solution to mop up the rest of that still-sticky blood. The easy part.

“I’m going to have to —” Boba huffed and just did it, stepped forward until his own knees came flush to the edge of Din’s seat, caged in completely by the warmth of Din’s legs and the chill of his beskar. 

Din, who had returned to looking at the ceiling, just made a small noise of assent. His fingers gripped the throne arms, Boba noted, curling and uncurling — the only bit of movement in his otherwise-still body. 

So Boba leaned in closer, wetting first the engravings on Din’s chest, and digging the polishing cloth into the mountains and valleys of beskar. After a moment, he realized his gloves made his fingers too broad to really scour every groove. He pulled off the heavy leathers and tucked them into his belt. 

That wasn’t _so_ bad. He could feel the cool beskar on his fingertips, trace the sticky spatters of blood. With Din looking at the ceiling, Boba didn’t feel quite the same pressure. He could lose himself in the monotony of it, in the repetitive care, the precision required to scrape even the tiniest drip of blood from under a curling arabesque. His hands fell in to follow the rhythms — of the rise and fall of Din’s chest, of Boba’s own heartbeat, of the dull roar of city noises outside the throne room windows. 

He lost track of the way Din’s thighs pressed him in, in how the way he stood felt like some parody of intimacy — between Din’s arms, and yet they were held so far apart from him. He lost track of his embarrassment, and his hesitancy, and the determination to keep his hands curled over every little hint of himself, fingers clenched, so that no one could ever pry them loose. 

There was just this, Din’s armor under his hands, Din _trusting_ him. Din’s breaths slowing, his body relaxing. Boba had done that for him.

 _This_ was why Boba had offered to do this. 

With the chest plate and pauldrons cleaned, Boba lifted Din’s right arm from the throne. The gauntlets were more functional than aesthetic, so there was less embellishment to scour with his cloth. Boba almost felt a pang, that he wouldn’t be able to hold Din by the wrist for long, to rotate his arm to and fro just to hunt out every lick of blood. 

That just left Din’s helmet. 

Boba cleared his throat, so he wouldn’t take Din by surprise. An unfortunate way to go: stabbed by the half-asleep Old Ways’ Mand’alor on the day of his coronation, for reaching too close to his helm. 

“I’m going to clean your face, now,” he said.

And then he took Din’s helmet between his bare hands, tipping Din’s head down to face him. Boba felt a million things, in that moment, and he wished he’d had the foresight to just — do what he did on a job, and wrench each and every emotion out of himself and stuff it away into the dark recesses of his helmet. His hands, on Din’s cheeks — a mirror of a lover’s touch, going in for a kiss. Yet Din held himself so far away, back against the Mandalorian throne. That visor, boring into him again. 

Boba had never seen Din without the helmet, had not been present on the bridge that day in the imperial cruiser. He knew Din had not taken it off since. He didn’t know if he would again. 

He wondered, sometimes, what lay behind that endless, expressionless black. But it would never be for him to know.

“Thank you,” Boba said quietly, “for trusting me with this.” 

A sharp breath stuttered past Din’s vocoder, but he didn’t say anything.

And then Boba went back to work, taking that same meticulous care. He braced Din’s face with one hand, applied the polishing cloth with the other. The helmet’s engravings started at the trunk of the t-visor, spiderwebbing out to cover the hollows of the beskar’s cheeks. Ridiculous, that this man had not one, but _two_ sets of fitted beskar’gam in the purest beskar. 

He tried not to get fanciful about this whole thing — any more than he already had — but Boba would almost swear he could feel Din’s breath puffing out of his helmet, just brushing his fingers. That now-familiar rhythm came back to him, and he followed it into the calm. 

As the sun shifted behind them and the shadows grew longer, Boba realized that he’d been at this for what some might consider a truly unreasonable amount of time. Din’s helmet was shining, though, as clean as if it had never seen battle. 

“I think that’s it,” Boba said, trying not to let regret creep into his voice. Though his back had long since begun to hurt from leaning forward, and his hands were beginning to cramp, and the acid scars from the sarlacc were starting to tighten the way they always did after too long without lotion, he could do this for hours. He found similar calm in cleaning _Slave I_ , in buffing and repainting his own armor or maintaining his guns. But there was something special, in doing it for someone else. 

Din held his arms up in front of him, turning them to examine them in the light. The yellow-stained glass of the throne caught the metal and reflected off it.

“Looks good,” he began, and Boba felt a flush of pride at the praise. “But. Hm. I think you missed a spot.” And he gestured at his left thigh. 

Boba couldn’t help it, and apparently also couldn’t control his stupid fucking mouth today. “Oh, so you want me to kneel for you?” 

“Uh,” Din responded, eloquently, and Boba worried for a horrible minute that the whole time he’d been the only one in this strange headspace, that this was just another one of those things that happened when you were in the dark alone in your helmet, that Din actually couldn’t see through him at _all_ — 

But then Din’s words interrupted him, pulling him from the spiral: impossibly soft, retreating into formality as he did so often when he felt uncomfortable. “Only if you wanted. This has been more than sufficient. I just thought you might — like — to do more...” 

Boba’s impulses spoke before his brain, again. He kneeled, bracing himself against the throne. 

After all, hadn’t he just wished for more time? 

He would have to post up on his knees a bit to reach Din’s thighs, grateful for the padding on his armor. And then he paused, not sure of his next steps. Was this — Din had been literal, right? This wasn’t some odd, roundabout way to ask for a blowjob? But, no, Boba had been the one to give it that kind of spin, to change the air between them. 

Not that Boba would turn down the chance to suck Din’s cock — he’d been half-hoping Din would say yes, when he offered. Blowing him probably would have felt _less_ intimate than whatever this was, at this point. Diffused some of the tension, turned it in a different direction. But. He didn’t think that’s what they wanted, either of them. Not right now, at least. 

He started with Din’s shins, to buy himself more time to think. They went quickly, mostly clean of blood. Boba’s face burned. He struggled to keep his breathing even, to make sure his vocoder didn’t pick up how _obvious_ he was, but at this point he couldn’t be sure whether he’d actually managed to quiet his breaths. 

After a moment’s thought, he took Din’s booted foot into his hand, too, wiped that down with the linens he’d discarded earlier, and turned to the other. He’d like to do more of that, sometime — pull out his polishes and his waxes, clean those boots, make them shine. Not now, though. This had gone on long enough. And then he returned to the originally offending thigh plate, rising up on his knees. Again, minimal engraving, and quick work. 

At the end of it all, Boba sat frozen between his king’s knees, bathed in the light of a sun that shone down on a once-dead planet Boba had thought he’d never see again. His father, exiled — and now the son, the carbon copy, kneeled before that throne. His fingers trembled where they lay on Din’s thighs. 

“Thank you,” Din said, and, “that’s all. Please.” 

Boba released a breath.

For a moment — just a moment — he let his head rest on Din’s knee. He wished he’d had the foresight to take his helmet off, at the beginning of all this. He might have felt that warmth against his bare cheek, just for a moment.

But: then he would have felt cracked open, on display. He could never have done that for Din, with his face bare. 

Din settled a hand at the back of Boba’s neck, still gloved, and Boba closed his eyes. 

“Thank you,” Din breathed again, and Boba felt at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate summary for this fic: Boba plays a game of predicament bondage with himself, in which the predicaments are accidental physical intimacy vs accidental emotional intimacy.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading. If you enjoyed this, check out my "rival bounty hunters on the HoloNet" AU, [A Series of Unfortunate Collisions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28825062).
> 
> Catch me on tumblr at [neverfeedthesarcophagi](http://neverfeedthesarcophagi.tumblr.com).


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